Thousands of telemarketing jobs cut in Morocco?

In France, mainstream media journalists don't have a strong grasp of the call-center industry, or of how AI is reshaping it. Should companies invest in quality, accessible phone-based customer service, or abandon the market altogether and put all their faith in AI instead? To do what, exactly? The intent-based leads industry, for one, is about to enjoy a solid new boom.

In practice, the outsourced call-center industry looks a lot like France itself: heavily indebted, with a few decisive deadlines coming up fast. En-Contact has put together a short roundup of recent, noteworthy developments to help you start the fall season informed.

Customer relations companies are no longer growing in the French market. Only E/Y is making money, off its annual report :) 

E/Y and SP2C released their annual barometer on the state of the outsourced customer relations market in early July. The key takeaways: the market shrank for the first time, down 1.4%. Its size is estimated at €3.5 billion in France. Among the major players, none posted growth except ADM Value, which now generates more than €200 million in revenue. Notably, it's the only company in the Top Ten, and the only one with revenue above €100 million, to have adopted disruptive tools such as speech analytics (with Callity), and the only one achieving profitable growth. At TP, Concentrix, and Konecta, this type of platform was long viewed from a distance... Among second-tier players, Euro-CRM, One Pilot, Wisecom, and the Floween group (Citizen Call, Teleactis, Force Plus) are reportedly growing. Tersea is also profitable. On a global market valued at $390 billion, French-speaking outsourced customer relations is a small fish in a big pond.

Mercato: Laurent Uberti and Olivier Camino have stepped down from leading Sitel, the world's number three, which they co-founded. Thanks to them, and others, for writing some of the finest pages in the history of call centers in France and around the world. The trio (the official narrative has erased Arnaud de Lacoste from the story) got their start running surveys and satisfaction studies for EDF. No new CEO has been named yet, a surprisingly long vacancy. Benoit Leclercq, formerly of Creadev, is serving as interim.

At TP, Jorge Amar, "the gay Latino, Argentine", who took the helm of the world's number one player a few months ago, has been building out his management team, bringing in a number of former consultants (read more here). Andreas Braun, Sebastien Cubela, and Sara Pliego Gomez are the new captain's latest recruits.

A shrinking market, why?

Major BPO players have been slow to adopt AI tools, whatever they claim, which is only accelerating their loss of competitiveness and their ability to win new clients. Speaking to the French press recently (Les Échos), Jorge Amar, TP's new CEO, said the company needed to move fast. For a former McKinsey consultant, what does "moving fast" actually mean? Homair, Europe's leading camping operator, integrated a conversational agent to handle and improve its bookings, for example, deploying an AI agent without even consulting its BPO provider. City-Drop, a utility vehicle rental company, also rolled out a conversational AI agent, and now handles nearly 30% of customer interactions end-to-end, around the clock.

Trends and players to watch, and a few misconceptions

Morocco, where many call-center operators are based, isn't going to suffer as much as people think from the new law that took effect on August 11. Cold-calling campaigns, outbound calls to unqualified lists, have, for more than a decade now, only kept small-time outfits in business. Not 40,000 telemarketers, as Le Monde reported in August.

AI conversational agents are set to partly revolutionize certain areas of phone-based customer service. Y Combinator isn't wrong about this, having invested heavily in numerous startups. In France, Volubile.ai and ILLUIN Technology are running well ahead of the pack in terms of track record. Many organizations, mid-sized companies, government agencies, are slow to adopt these tools, or are trying to build their own solutions in-house. That's a risky bet, based on what we've observed: building an AI agent that's effective, with a voice that's both suitable and legally compliant (not Denis Podalydès's voice), takes real expertise and months of intensive tuning.

For very large groups running Genesys, the big story for 2027 will be replacing their on-premise equipment. Alternatives exist, like Mediatel Data, a low-profile Romanian vendor beloved by its clients. Or Ino Global, which was also chosen over Genesys by a CAC 40 company. Dan Mazilu is a puzzle enthusiast. Read more here

Phone sales are still profitable

Even though the cost per sale has climbed considerably. Comme J'aime, the well-known weight-loss brand, wouldn't be pouring so much money into TV spots urging people to call its sales team if the math didn't work out. And yet, at 6 a.m., nobody picks up at 03 66 06 02 27. The phone greeting is almost charmingly out of step with reality: "we're receiving a high volume of calls and all our advisors are currently on the line." In a less corporate vein, fake-bank-advisor scams are industrial-scale, highly profitable, and carried out by phone by talented "freelance" con artists. These scammers, pursued in particular by judge Marine Fontange, show just how much talent and persuasive skill still matter in running a phone conversation.

At Club Med, too, we've found that sales rates and average basket sizes are higher when the first contact happens by phone. WhatsApp generates plenty of inquiries, but conversion rates on that channel are lower. Companies need to be reachable, responsive, and equipped with up-to-date customer knowledge so that call-center agents can operate independently.

This summer, I personally contacted: Crédit Agricole Alpes-Provence, Orange, Canal+, Enedis, and several construction tradespeople. As well as several hoteliers, including Marriott. Without going into every customer journey, and noting that some of these contacts were high-stakes, Crédit Agricole impressed me, as did Orange. Among tradespeople, callback or email response times ranged from two hours to two weeks. At La Banque Postale, staffing or scheduling often falls short.

I wanted to install a pool, so I asked for a quote

Pool manufacturers are swamped with prospect inquiries, up 40% over the past three months. Good for them.

Recently I contacted Desjoyaux, Waterair, and Alliance Piscines. None of these small or mid-sized companies has an AI agent in place. Two of them offer a form to fill out and promise to get back to you "as soon as possible." At the third, the form didn't even work. Not surprising, given it was early on a Saturday morning. But the company that manages to organize itself to call a prospect back exactly when they're available and receptive is the one that will win. In some highly competitive industries, an intent-based lead has a shelf life of two minutes. So every contact is a penalty kick.

Leads, AI agents, workforce management and scheduling, CRM and CCaaS platforms

Guillaume Masse, one of the few real experts in call-center scheduling, is someone worth meeting, alongside those mentioned above. As are Kilian and Léo, the duo at hipto. Stéphanie Delestre rounds out this to-do list.

Manuel Jacquinet.

Cover picture, CCA Casablanca (now Konecta), 2023 © Edouard Jacquinet